One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

The Films of 2014: The Purge: Anarchy

The
Purge was the
surprise hit of the summer of 2013, and also a well-made dystopian horror film.

The
first movie in the series was about, broadly-speaking, the normalization of
violence in the American society of the near future. The first film was a “siege”
horror film, with a normal (think: dysfunctional) nuclear family hunkered down
for a night of terror in their supposedly secure suburban home. The film grappled
with racism, privilege, and the necessity of meeting violence with violence. That
last thematic element might even qualify The Purge as an example of my
favorite horror sub-genre: the savage
cinema.

Films
of that type almost universally concern a key concern: what to do when those
you love are faced with brutal violence? Even if you deplore violence -- even
if you are a pacifist -- you have to act, right?

The
Purge: Anarchy
(2014) also succeeded with critics and audiences two summers ago, in part
because it so successfully “grows” the nightmarish future world established the
first film, and takes the audience outside -- into the pandemonium -- on Purge
Night.

Accordingly,
there is a feeling of vulnerability and exposure ever-present in this sequel,
as though a violent attack could come at any second, or from any direction. There
is almost no safety, after all, in a society that has committed the night
itself to murder. All the police
stations and hospitals are closed. The government is hiding.

It’s
just you…and the crazies with guns. I
love the sound of the Purge “horns” as the yearly ritual commences. Hunting season has begun, and that noise
captures the feeling of menace and danger perfectly.

Additionally,
The
Purge: Anarchy begins to develop a real political conscience for the burgeoning
franchise, but perhaps even more pertinently, examines the issues of personal morality
raised by “the purge” ritual.

When
is it right to kill? And when is it
right, if ever, to sacrifice yourself?

The
Purge: Anarchy,
in short, offers a remarkable amount of philosophical development for the
fledgling franchise, and thus never appears to be a rehash or regurgitation of
past glory. The decision to move the
series from the relative safety of “indoors” to the total insecurity -- or anarchy
-- of the city at large, ultimately pays real dividends in terms of the movie’s
horror quotient, as well.

This
is one sequel that is as good, if not superior, to the material that spawned
it.

“We
no longer worship at the altar of Christ…but Smith and Wesson.”

On the night of the annual purge,
in 2023, a man called the Sergeant (Frank Grillo) plans to purge. He has mapped
out, in fact, his entire plan. A year earlier, his son was murdered by a drunk
driver and now he plans to use the occasion of the Purge to take his legally-permissible
bloody revenge.

Once The Purge has begun however,
the Sergeant runs across two imperiled women on the streets of Los Angeles: Eva
Sanchez (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter, Cali (Zoe Soul). When the Sergeant hears
Cali calling for her mother in terror, he intervenes and saves the duo from
government troops.

Meanwhile, a bickering young
couple, Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez) also run across the Sergeant’s
path, seeking his protection on the one night a year in America when all crime
in America, including murder, is legal.

The sergeant doesn’t want to help
the bevy of strangers, but finds that they are up against powerful and wealthy
forces of the establishment. Not only are unlucky citizens being shipped to
exclusive events as “fodder” for the wealthy, but the government has dispatched
special “death squads” to trim the fat out of American society.

“The
redistribution of wealth upward through murder must stop.

The
Purge: Anarchy
features five characters trapped outside on Purge night, and only one of them --
The Sergeant -- is physically and mentally equipped to be there.

Accordingly, the film features some
powerful jump scares, as well as some very violent action scenes. One character,
a “purger” with a machete, wearing a white mask with the word “God” scrawled on
it, is quite an effective avatar of terror.
The killer is both anonymous (his identity hidden) and memorable, or
distinctive. The legend on his mask
suggests how he views himself. As one who take life, or preserves it, on his
choice, on his whim.

Most of the film features the protagonists
on the run, encountering both street level crime (blue collar) while the last
portion of the film involves a different kind of terror, one (white collar)
associated with being the playthings of the disdainful rich and powerful.

The Purge: Anarchy is also the film that introduces
the idea into the series that the Purge exists for specific political, partisan
reasons, and that the government secretly participates in the annual bloodbath. As I wrote about regarding Election
Year on Tuesday, the film concerns the idea that the rich can get out
of paying their fair share of taxes by eliminating those who are subsidized by
the government in terms of unemployment, or health care.

So in this world, being rich -- and
remaining rich -- is more important than helping one’s fellow man. That “fellow man” instead is seen as a drag
on society, and one who does not deserve to continue to live. It is the logical evolution of the makers vs.
takers argument we see in the news all the time.

Only the argument has been sanctified in this
fictional world wby religion, and enforced by violence, the so-called “altar of
Smith and Wesson.”

Blessed be the Purge?

The government soldier who commits
mass murder in the film seems authentically debauched by the moral, decent sergeant. You are supposed to end lives on the Purge,
he insists, not save them. Yet the
soldier believes he is performing his duty, helping to trim the fat out of
American society. He has drunk the kool-aid, and believes he is being patriotic
by murdering his fellow citizens.

The Purge, a “policy” or program of
the New Founding Fathers, only succeeds at all, we learn in Anarchy,
because the government has been augmenting citizen purgers with death squads,
sent to inner cities and other locales where society’s fat presumably lives.

This is an intriguing concept,
carried into even more specific political terrain in Election Year. What I enjoy and admire most about Anarchy,
however, are the tests of morality for the specific characters.

The Sergeant ultimately chooses not
to kill the man who murdered his boy, and it’s a good choice. Had he murdered that drunk driver, he would
not have survived the night at all. The government soldier is killed, in fact,
by that drunk driver. The message is clear. Revenge might be satisfying in the
moment, but in the long-run it won’t serve you, or save your life.

Similarly, Eva’s father turns
himself over to a family of rich purgers for the fee of $100,000 dollars. He is
dying, and Eva can no longer afford his medicine. He too judges the morality of
his situation, and determines that he can best serve his family at this
juncture by sacrificing himself, and earning his daughter and granddaughter the
money they need to escape poverty (and escape, by consequence, Purge Night).

The scene in which this old man --
serving as the sacrificial lamb -- is prepped for the slaughter, is quite
upsetting, even in spite of the fact that it is his choice to die. It’s pretty clear he had no other choice but
to submit to this barbarism. And just look at the WASP-y, preppie family around
him. The family members have protected their expensive mansion in plastic
drapery, all around him, so they can murder him without staining the expensive carpet. First they pray over him, and then they take
their machetes to him.

It’s sick not only that they “purge”
as a family, but that they pray over their victim, believing that they are
somehow made holy (or blessed) through the murder of an innocent. They value themselves and their sense of
morality too highly.

Still, this scene is rewarding for
many reasons. It reveals that those who are rich are willing to “buy” the lives
of others for Purge Night. This act has
made people, essentially, a commodity, a fact which recurs in the film
involving the “God” purger. But this
development also makes sense, given the overall nature of the ritual. This rich, entitled family would not want to
go out and be endangered on Purge Night, so they order “take out,” essentially;
bringing their victim to their home.

The scene in which the Sergeant and
the others are auctioned off for the Purge, to the highest bidder, also
captures the essential moral bankruptcy of this dystopian culture. Rich people
sit at tables with fancy linens, sipping expensive drinks, hungering to murder
the less valuable members of society. It
is a treat, indeed, when the Sergeant turns the tables on them, and shows that
he is capable of “purging” too. Of course, when he commits murder, it is for
self-defense, and the defense of innocent sheep in his flock: Eva and Cali,
Shane and Liz.

The Purge: Anarchy succeeds by showing us new “geography”
in this horrible future world, and by introducing us to characters we care
about, and who must make tough choices about how to navigate the law, the
Purge. It’s a really good “middle” piece
of the Purge series, because it
develops and deepens the ideas of the first film, and leads directly into the
deepening of the ideas highlighted in the third film.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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